"Sometimes our teachers write books.

And sometimes they play fetch."

Researchers are beginning to help us understand the powerful role that pets can play in our lives. Watching fish swimming in a tank reduced anxiety for patients awaiting a visit with the dentist. Petting an animal has been shown to reduce blood pressure. In another study of senior adults on Medicare, those with pets had fewer calls to doctors and other medical professionals.

Pets can be healers not only when it comes to our blood pressure, but also when it comes to our hearts and souls. In his book, Kindred Spirits, Alan Schoen tells a story about a hard-driving Manhattan lawyer fulfilling her dream of owning a horse. When she bought the former racehorse, she didn’t realize that the horse had been badly abused in the course of her training. The horse was withdrawn and frightened, expecting to be hit at any moment. Schoen began working with the horse, healing the pain of her physical problems. He also taught the owner how to work with the horse’s emotional problems, using compassion and kindness to ease her fear and panic. Over time, the fearful horse was transformed into a loving, gentle animal who raced to the fence to greet her owner.

But the transformation in the owner was equally dramatic. In learning to be gentle with her horse, she learned to be gentle with herself. In seeing the transformation of the fears of her animal, she began to see how much fear controlled her own life. She began working to heal her own wounds, shifting the focus of her own life from fear to love. As she learned her own lessons and did her own healing, she began reaching out to other people whose spirits had also been hurt and wounded.

In her article, "The Red-Haired Angel" (Common Boundary magazine, July/August, 1998), Mary McCue talks about the death of her dog, Luke. The golden retriever had been a gift from her daughter and McCue had recognized the healer potential in the dog immediately. She writes about their relationship: "Over the years, his responses to a sigh or the way I closed a door helped me retrieve some pretty withered instincts. Like a good analyst, he’d raise an eyebrow at a certain tone of voice as if to say, ‘And what’s the meaning of that?’ Or put a forepaw on my lap when he heard a sob. His brand of psychiatry was atypical, however, for he was just as interested in pleasure as in pain. When I danced to Liza Minelli, he "danced" with me. And the way he’d wait - throwing himself like a rug across the doorway to my study until I took the inevitable break - gave me an intimate and comforting feeling."

My fomer office landlord, Mark Rosenbaum, often brought his cocker spaniel, Rosie, to the office with him. I threatened to put her on my payroll, because she greeted everyone coming through the front door with a manner that is both respectful of their space but also plainly ecstatic that they’ve chosen to walk through the door. Her friendliness and warmth and tail-waging delight welcomed even the most anxious visitor.

When a family is facing the critical illness of one of its members, it’s easy to assume that caring for a pet is just one more job that has to be done above and beyond caring for the family member. Studies have shown differently, for people find comfort in the routine of pet care. It’s familiar and it’s easy. It’s a constant in the midst of the roller coaster ride of caregiving and illness. Likewise, in another study of women who had suffered a significant loss, they expressed a preference for their canine comforters over the human variety. Their dogs weren’t full of platitudes about being fine or advice about what the women should do or admonitions to stop crying. The dogs were simply there. They listened. They sat with the women. They bore witness to the tears, the questions and memories and the silence, all without judgment. The women identified this acceptance as one of the most important parts of their healing.

Understanding the emotional and physical health benefits of pets opens us up to a much wider truth. Healing and healers come in many forms. Sometimes it’s a doctor in a hospital or a counselor in an office. Sometimes it’s a workshop or a personal discipline such as meditation. And sometimes it comes through a dog or horse or cat or bird or rabbit. Sometimes our teachers write books. And sometimes they play fetch.

Healing can come through a thousand different avenues. Sometimes it comes in the horse running to the fence to greet you or the cat purring in your lap. Sometimes, like the young men in my hospital group, it comes through a tree that feels safe or another spot in nature that feels sacred. It comes from seeing the sun break through the clouds when you’ve found it hard to see anything other than darkness in your own life. Or seeing the first flowers break through the ground when you were convinced winter would never end. If we but see them and allow them, we are surrounded by healers in all shapes and sizes.

For more information on the studies cited, go to www.delatsociety.org.

Allen Schoen, Kindred Spirits. NY: Broadway Books, 2001

© 2002 Peggy Haymes

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